


Business Practical: What to Wear When You're Saving Your Boss

by Cherepashka



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Cat Grant BAMF Slytherin Media Mogul, F/F, Superheroing is hard, Taking down the patriarchy, cheesy villains, supercat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 02:42:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7296262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherepashka/pseuds/Cherepashka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Cat Grant was going to die, she was damn well going to do it in style. </p><p>(Or: Sexism attacks. Cat and Kara fight back.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Business Practical: What to Wear When You're Saving Your Boss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abcooper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abcooper/gifts).



> abcooper requested "something from Cat's POV about how she knew all along that Kara is Supergirl" for her birthday. This, um, definitely at least started as that. abcooper, this is extremely belated, but I hope you like it anyway! Sorry it's so late. Happy birthday!
> 
> I am not very far into the series yet, so things make no effort to be canon-consistent post-Ep. 7ish.
> 
> Beta credits to [Cinis](https://www.fanfiction.net/~cinis) and [delicious upholstery](http://archiveofourown.org/users/polly_oliver/pseuds/delicious%20upholstery). They are both lovely editors and lovelier humans. Any remaining errors are mine, not theirs.

If Cat Grant was going to die, she was damn well going to do it in style. She wasn’t going to give the man holding her and her staff at gunpoint—or at least an approximation of gunpoint; Cat had never seen a gun quite so sleek and tapered, or one that vaporized objects in a flash of blue light the way this weapon did—the satisfaction of knowing she was terrified. She’d always been cool and competent and calculating, which in a man would have been a ticket straight to a boardroom or seat in Congress, but in a woman just inspired people to call her other, less savory, c-words. Cat had clawed her way into a boardroom regardless, and she was determined to stay calm even as she was taken hostage in her own building.

When she’d steadied herself enough to take her eyes off the weapon, Cat realized she recognized the weapon’s owner, although his face was distorted and his skin had an ugly greenish tinge that clashed horribly with the red and blue on his outfit.

Patrick Bascom.

He’d been Vice Chairman of the Catco Board, Cat’s staunchest ally for years, until he quit to seek a presidential nomination. Cat had been on the point of endorsing him a month later when she learned that he had tried to sabotage her company and short-sell his shares in order to fund his campaign. She also learned, that day, where trust got you. When she got a tip about his sexual harassment of young, female staffers, she was only too happy to break the story that scuttled his political ambitions.

It seemed, more than five years later, that he’d held onto his grudge. He'd started calling himself Patriot, because all the halfway decent villain names were taken. He had also leveled up in the weapons department, and crammed his middle-aged executive’s physique into a truly horrible skin-tight suit that was some perverse version of an American flag. If it weren’t for the very deadly weapon he had pointed at her, she would have laughed.

Seriously, what _was_ it with former employees suddenly reemerging with villain powers? Was she going to have to keep tabs on everybody she ever fired? She had resources, but she wasn’t the goddamn NSA.

“You,” said Bascom. He was pointing at her. “Cat Grant.”

Cat stepped forward.

“Me,” she said. “How thrilling, you kept your facial recognition skills.”

Bascom’s face contorted. “You tried to bring me down. Now you’re going to broadcast my comeback. I have a message for the people of National City. And when I have control of this place, I’ll enjoy watching you suffer.”

“What a compelling case you make for my cooperation,” Cat said.

Patriot scowled. “You’ll have other incentives.”

His hand moved to a device clipped to his belt that looked like someone had glued the innards of a toaster onto a smartphone, and when he pressed a button on it, Carter’s voice filled the room.

“Mom? Can you hear me?”

Cat went still. Her heart, until then beating at a steady, controlled not-panic, lurched into a frenzy. 

“Where is he? What did you do to him?” she hissed. She’d known since he left her company that Patrick Bascom was a sleaze, but she hadn’t thought he’d stoop to kidnapping children.

“Nothing,” said the Patriot. “Yet.”

“Mom, what’s going on?” Carter sounded panicky. Cat could barely hear him over the blood pounding in her ears, but she willed herself to focus. “There’re all these guys at our house, and—”

“It’s going to be okay,” Cat said, hoping he could hear her. “Just stay calm, Carter, everything’s going to be okay.”

“But what’s hap—” Bascom pressed the button again, and Carter’s voice cut off. Cat turned on him, eyes blazing.

“How dare you,” she spat. She took half a step toward him, then jumped as the desk she’d rested her hand on suddenly vaporized in a flash of blinding blue.

She froze again, breathing hard. Losing her temper wasn’t going to help Carter, or any of the employees backed up against the wall. She had to play for time.

“All right, Patriarchy Man or whatever,” she said, voice level. “What do you want?”

“Like I said, you’re going to broadcast my comeback. I want you to get me on every screen and station in National City.”

 _For a former media executive, you have a terrible grasp of how broadcast journalism works,_ she wanted to say.

Instead, she looked around until she found the tech hobbit who had helped out during the earthquake, Will or Witt or whoever.

“Can you get us set up?” she asked, hoping he’d pick up on her bluff. Thankfully, he nodded. “All right, everyone. We have a broadcast to run. Chop chop.”

She pitched her voice somewhere between “authoritative” and “impending deadline,” and it worked. The business end of a sci-fi vaporizer gun was frightening, certainly, but most of her staff had been at Catco long enough for dread of Cat’s deadline voice to lodge much deeper in their brains than ordinary fear of deadly weapons. They’d follow her lead.

Kara, she noticed, was nowhere to be seen. Good. With any luck, that meant Cat wouldn’t have to stall for too long before Supergirl arrived to even out their odds.

* * *

_**Earlier** _

Most people no longer underestimated Cat Grant. She generally saw to it that those who did only made that mistake once—which wasn’t to say she hadn’t taken full advantage of being underestimated in the past. Plenty of unwary interviewees had let slip more to Cat the curvaceous ditz than they would have to Cat the incisive journalist. Even now, she found it useful from time to time.

Case in point: Kara.

Who had just come in to deliver Cat’s latte, already apologizing for something Cat didn’t pay attention to, because she found apologies irritating. The girl _still_ thought Cat didn’t know about the whole Supergirl thing, because she evidently believed Cat was too stupid to see past a pair of glasses, or notice that her assistant mysteriously vanished every time a citywide crisis demanded Kryptonian superpowers.

Cat seized the latte and sipped. Tepid. Again. Didn’t Kryptonians have heat vision? How hard could it possibly be for Kara to glare the coffee to an appropriate scalding point before handing it to her boss? Cat considered asking, but settled for dropping the coffee into the trash bin. The benefits of being Supergirl’s secret boss outweighed the downsides of lukewarm coffee. For now. Barely.

“Kiera, get Layouts to redo these, they’re as tasteless as that latte,” Cat said, thrusting the proofs that had been spread on her desk at her assistant. “Digital still hasn’t sent me the graphics for tonight’s network feature. I need those ten minutes ago, or Jimmy Olsen will find himself back on the Planet’s doorstep. Oh, and cancel my three o’clock, I’m blocking that for edits on the follow-up Supergirl profile. Not that it should need much editing. After all, I wrote it.” She thwapped a copy of the profile on top of the proofs Kara was clutching and pretended to turn back to her computer, watching Kara carefully out of the corner of her eye.

The thing was, Supergirl, from what little Cat had seen of her interactions with NCPD and the FBI, wasn’t the best at taking orders. Kara Danvers, on the other hand, was still wary of challenging her employer (that one night of anger management martinis aside). Which meant that Cat could critique Supergirl, and Kara would take it.

It had started as mere business sense, protecting the brand Cat herself had created, using Supergirl to save the Tribune and scoop the Daily Planet, and making sure National City’s new hero didn’t crash and burn along the way. But somewhere along the line, Cat found herself rooting for Supergirl to succeed on her own terms.

Maybe part of it was the realization that Cat was the one underestimating Kara—when she noticed Kara at all, that was. Cat was a top-notch reporter and hadn't become one by being oblivious, but CEOs of major media companies just didn’t have time to pay attention to every scurrying underling in the office. Besides, the hallmark of a good assistant was getting things done without being noticed. Cat wasn’t going beat herself up for missing the signs at first. 

But when she had begun to suspect, and then later, when she was sure, well, it was all just so … familiar. It reminded Cat of how she’d been, starting out. Not the flying or lifting buses or x-ray vision, obviously, but the way Kara was trying so hard, insisting she could do everything, biting off more than she could chew and then chewing so hard she was going to max out Catco’s generous dental plan if she didn't choke first.

Still, being Supergirl meant that Kara was finding her feet a bit and standing up for herself more. Standing up to Cat, even, and that more than anything was what had shifted Cat’s attitude from professional interest to growing respect.

She could see a frown starting between Kara’s eyebrows as she skimmed over the Supergirl profile. Cat gave her thirty seconds or so before clearing her throat. “Kiera. Layouts.”

Kara started.

“Yes, Ms. Grant,” she murmured, turning to the door. Cat felt a brief surge of disappointment, but then Kara stopped at the door and looked back at her. “It’s just, this article,” Kara said hesitantly. Cat arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you being a little, well, hard on her?” Cat raised her other eyebrow and waited. Kara took a deep breath and plunged on. “All this stuff about how she’s just taking her cues from Superman, doing things they way he would—the way he does things has saved a lot of lives. And so has she.”

“Kiera, she’s a woman. And we can spill all the champagne we want over Lily Ledbetter being on the books, but the fact remains that a woman with power still cannot afford to be as good as her male counterparts. She has to be better. And Supergirl is better—Reactron proved that. She has skills Superman doesn’t have, which she should be developing. But if anything, she’s actively downplaying them.”

“But … but they have exactly the same powers,” Kara said.

“I’m not talking about superpowers,” Cat said, shifting her glasses down her nose so that she could fix Kara with a glare over the rims. Kara might have heat vision, but Cat had _practice_. Kara wilted under the force of the glare. “Would you rather I went easy on her? Kiera, where do you think I’d be if people had gone easy on me when I was her age?” Cat looked Kara up and down, pursing her lips. “Probably still doing your job. Which I notice you’ve been conspicuously not doing while we were having this little chat. Chop chop.”

Kara fled. Cat waited until she was gone before allowing herself to smile.

That was when the man who used to be Patrick Bascom and about thirty black-clad mooks rappelled onto her balcony, brandishing vaporizers, and stormed her office. 

* * *

_**Now** _

“Find someone on makeup. Mr. Patronizing can’t go on like that, his skin won’t hold up under studio lights.”

Cat barked orders, hardly aware of what she was saying, or even of the vaporizer still pointed at her. Her mind was racing; she couldn’t be sure Kara had caught her conversation with Patriot, even with the enhanced hearing, which meant Supergirl might not know the scumbag had Carter. Cat had long ago reconciled herself to making enemies—pissing off powerful people was a sign that she was doing her job right. But the thought that one of the enemies she’d made was putting Carter at risk…

“Get the green screens set up in my office,” she said, on painful alert for any movement outside the window. “We’ll broadcast from there.”

A makeup artist rushed in with an array of foundations, hurrying partly because of Cat’s orders and partly because of the two henchmen trailing him. Cat could only hope he’d brought a foundation strong enough to mask the sickly greenish cast of Bascom’s skin. Not that they would do the broadcast at all if she could help it, but some decent makeup might make Bascom’s face less revolting.

“I’ll do that,” she snapped, when the makeup artist’s shaking hands threatened to spill liquid foundation all over Patriot’s clothes and Cat’s carpet. Cat _liked_ her carpet. Plus, she knew it would make Bascom uncomfortable to have her hands so close to his face. Not that she would try anything with Carter’s life in the balance, but the thought of gouging his eyes out was a tempting one, and she didn’t bother to hide the fact that she was considering it.

Behind her, someone was rolling the screens into place in front of her window, blocking the view of National City and giving Cat an idea. She took her time—Bascom was now a jaundiced sort of yellow, a marginal improvement on his previous artichoke green—and when the makeup was done, she palmed the foundation and tucked it up her sleeve, thankful she’d picked sleek pantsuit over form-fitting dress that morning.

“Hurry up,” Bascom growled, nearly startling her into losing the foundation bottle up her sleeve. She fought down panic. He hadn’t seen what she had done; he was just impatient. Like so many men she’d known, he thought he was entitled to get whatever he wanted immediately. Cat, of course, was entitled to exactly that, but only because she ran a media company and they had deadlines.

“You’ve had five years to plan this, what’s the rush?” she said smoothly, edging over to the green screen closest to the window. Fortunately, the mooks by the window were too busy keeping a lookout for Supergirl to notice what Cat was doing. She crossed her arms, hiding the foundation bottle while she worked it open and coated a fingertip in the makeup.

“I’m through waiting,” Patriot said. “Once I have control of National City, you’ll pay a decade for each year I had to wait.”

She rolled her eyes and grabbed the green screen, pretending to adjust its angle while she scrawled CARTER in foundation on the back of it. If Kara saw it, she’d know what it meant. Cat just had to hope she saw it.

“Well, obviously I stay in shape, but that’s still an optimistic assessment of my lifespan,” she drawled, doing her best Vanna White against the green screen and slipping the foundation bottle into her pocket as she rested one hand on an outthrust hip. Thank goodness for tailored suits where she could insist on real pockets—the inch-deep, decorative little dents that passed for pockets in off-the-rack business clothes were the most infuriating thing since uncompensated emotional labor. “Am I supposed to be flattered?”

She flashed Bascom a saccharine smile, and he snarled wordlessly and twitched his gun to obliterate one of the TV screens beside her. Damn. She’d have to be careful not to push him into enough of a temper to hurt Carter. Or her, for that matter; his vaporizer gun was once again leveled straight at her chest. _My eyes,_ she wanted to snap at him, _are up here._

She clamped her lips over the words and focused instead on directing her staff to adjust and readjust the lights and microphones, while she got back to work with bronzer and rouge. Every change, however small, bought them time. She had to assume Kara would be busy for a while; she didn’t know how many men were guarding Carter.

“Enough. I want this broadcast done before Supergirl shows up,” said Patriot at last, as if he’d read her mind. Wait, that wasn’t one of his powers now, was it? No, it couldn’t be, or he would have caught her message about Carter. He was just getting nervous. Nervousness, she could use.

“Scared?” Cat asked.

“Hardly,” he said, but she noticed he was starting to sweat through the makeup. Cat paused for a moment to be disgusted—Catco studio makeup was designed to hold up under powerful lighting, so whatever was in Patriot’s sweat must be potent. “I just don’t want any … interruptions.”

A flash of blue at the corner of her vision was the only warning Cat had before Supergirl punched her way through a window, knocking a green screen onto two of Patriot’s cronies, and landed between Cat and Bascom.

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “Am I interrupting something?” Cat’s heart was hammering, but she felt a rush of pride. Banter. Kara really was coming along.

Patriot had moved to train his gun on Supergirl, as had the dozen or so of his minions within sight of Cat’s office. Cat’s breath caught as Bascom’s other hand moved to the toaster-phone device at his belt.

“I’ve got her son,” he said, oozing smugness. “One move and little Carter gets blown up. Don’t bother looking, he’s not here. Even you can’t be in two places at once.”

“Carter’s safe,” Supergirl said, keeping her eyes on Bascom but speaking just as much to Cat. Bascom barked out a laugh and pressed the button on his machine. Nothing but white noise came through, and his eyes widened. Cat could have kissed Kara with relief. _Actually,_ said a small, oddly detached part of her brain, _that’s a thought.…_

A filing cabinet flew past, inches from her head. Kara had taken advantage of Bascom’s moment of disbelief to launch herself at him; she, Patriot, and his henchmen were now a maelstrom of punches and flying kicks. Cat could come back later to the intriguing notion she’d just had; for now, she needed to get out of the way. 

Cat ducked behind a desk and watched, impressed. Her assistant, accommodating and fair-minded to a fault as Kara Danvers, had learned to fight dirty as Supergirl. She was using Patriot’s men against each other, forcing them to come at her in close quarters, where they couldn’t risk firing their vaporizers lest they shoot one another instead of her. One foolhardy man did fire, and missed, taking out a section of wall next to the already-shattered window. Cat stretched her leg out and hooked a stilettoed foot around his ankle, sending him tumbling through the hole he’d blasted. She savored the panic that flooded his eyes as he plummeted for an instant and crashed into the fire escape one story below.

What, she wasn’t a _murderer_. But she’d spent months optimizing her office for peak workflow; she was entitled to a bit of revenge against the people wantonly destroying it.

Kara, meanwhile, had incapacitated the remainder of Patriot’s followers, leaving only Bascom standing. Cat’s staff had mostly followed their CEO's lead and taken cover under desks and behind filing cabinets.

“It’s over, Patriot,” said Kara. “Give it up.”

His eyes were bulging, actually straining at their sockets, which Cat had thought only happened to characters in Carter’s comic books. It was even more revolting on a real person.

“No,” he bit out, throat working. “No, I can’t—” His voice choked off and he trembled, clutching at his head. Cat slowly stood up from behind her desk.

“Patrick, whatever charade you’re playing—” She didn’t finish, because Bascom collapsed, body jerking violently.

Something green and viscous was pouring from his right ear. Bascom shuddered and groaned, half-conscious, his face going gray.

“Oh, no,” Kara breathed.

Cat reached for her phone. Whatever was happening to Bascom, it looked bad, and if he died now she’d never get to tell him off properly. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“This isn’t something they can fix,” Supergirl snapped. She bit her lip. “I should have known.”

“Known what?”

Supergirl didn’t answer; she had dropped to her knees beside Bascom and was trying to hold him still so that she could stare, eyes vaguely glazed, at his forehead. To anyone else it might seem like Kara had been concussed, but Cat recognized Supergirl’s x-ray vision look.

“Come on,” Kara muttered, whether to Bascom or to herself, Cat couldn’t tell. “Come on, come on, you can do this.”

Patriot’s limbs were convulsing with much more force than any human should have been able to exert, so much that even Supergirl had to strain to hold him still. Then, suddenly, the last of the green stuff dropped from his ear with a horrible squelch.

The life left his eyes, and he stilled.

As Cat watched, revolted, the green substance hardened, coalescing into a vaguely insect-like shape with pincers and long skittering legs, about the size of her fist. It twisted from side to side, as if scenting the air, then with no warning launched itself at Cat.

She jerked backward, swatting at the thing. One of its pincers scored a long shallow gash across her forearm, but she kept it off her face. It landed, turned, and jumped again.

This time Supergirl’s heat vision intercepted it, frying it midair in a cloud of sulfurous smoke.

Everything was silent for a moment, except for the hiss of charred pieces of insect-thing hitting the carpet.

“What,” Cat said at last, “was that?”

“That was an—a parasite,” said Supergirl, moving to kneel by Bascom. Catco’s staff, more risk-averse than their CEO, were only now beginning to emerge from where they’d taken cover. Cat ignored them. 

“It was living in his brain, controlling him,” Supergirl continued. She touched two fingers to Patriot’s throat, then sat back on her heels and exhaled. “Probably for at least a year, considering how he looks. I’ve seen this kind before. Or at least read about them. They try to get their hosts into positions of power because they literally feed on fear, on the chemicals people emit when they’re scared of someone. Well, that and weapons-grade uranium—uh.” She paused, and began to gather up the of insect from the carpet. “I have to get these to—um.” She caught herself again, and Cat sighed. She probably wouldn’t get very far trying to get government secrets about probably-alien green-ooze insects out of Supergirl, which was a shame because that had sounded like a _fascinating_ story.

Wait. Cat took in a sharp breath as the realization hit her.

“When that thing went for _me_ , it was going to—” She paused and pursed her lips. Truth be told, even if they weren’t actually possessed, some of the men she’d worked with hadn’t been much better than slime-insects, and they’d given Cat Grant plenty of practice taking backhanded compliments. She smiled dangerously. “I guess it does recognize power when it sees it.” Then, quieter, “Thank you, Supergirl.”

Supergirl smiled, then turned and soared out through the smashed window. Cat only spared a second to watch her go.

Then she cast a glance around her office, which looked like a small tornado had whirled through it. “All right, back to work, everyone, deadlines don’t wait. Anybody not essential for tonight’s network, tomorrow’s magazine release, or the profile edits can get started tying up the unconscious accomplices until NCPD gets here. Oh, and I guess if you’re, I don’t know, traumatized or whatever, you can take the rest of the day.”

A few people did, shakily making their way to the elevator. Cat memorized the faces of the ones who left. If they couldn’t handle this kind of pressure, well, she wouldn’t fire them, but she’d know not to trust them with any real assignments during the next alien invasion or presidential election.

She herself managed to escape for an hour to check on Carter, who by the time she arrived had turned the whole incident from the story of his traumatic kidnapping to the story of how he got to meet his hero in person for the second time, and this time he’d gotten her autograph. So that was all right, mostly. She’d have to have a longer talk with him at some point to make sure his hero-worship of Supergirl wasn’t encouraging him to run toward crises rather than away. On the other hand, crisis had found him this time, and she was more than glad Supergirl had been there. 

She could only stay long enough to make sure Carter would be safe and change clothes; her forearm had stopped bleeding, but between that and the foundation coating the inside of her pocket, the suit wasn't going to be salvageable. When she got back to the office, NCPD were there, waiting to take her report, and then she had to supervise the temporary fixes that would make the Catco offices usable again, not to mention she had a magazine to release and a profile to edit. She at least managed to parallel process on the layout revisions and the police interview, telling them only that Bascom had had some kind of sudden medical problem right after Supergirl knocked out his underlings and avoiding any mention of alien slime insects. She had shooed the cops out and moved on to haranguing the magazine’s senior editor when Kara Danvers slipped in from the stairwell. Cat pretended not to notice.

Kara was clumsy and preoccupied all day—she managed to order decaf for Cat’s third coffee, for heaven’s sake—and Cat would have bitten anyone else’s head off for that, but this was a Supergirl problem, not a Kara problem. So, instead, she called Kara into her office.

“Yes, Ms. Grant?” Kara said.

“I’d like you to take a look at the revisions on the Supergirl profile,” Cat told her. “The good writers are all busy, but sometimes the perspective of your average thoughtless lay reader can be useful. The last section’s new. Focus on that.” Cat was rather proud of that section; she had added it after the events of that morning.

She waited while Kara read through the article once, flipped back to the beginning, and flipped to the end again. Cat watched her expression change.

“Well?”

“Ms. Grant, I—” Kara said. “I don’t understand.”

“I was under the impression when I hired you that you could at least read,” said Cat.

Kara let the jab fly past. “I—you’re so hard on her for parts of it, and then, this part at the end—you praise her even though she failed.”

“How did she fail?” Cat asked. “She protected Carter. She saved my staff. And she did it efficiently enough for the magazine to meet deadline.”

“But she couldn’t save Patriot.” She caught Cat’s raised eyebrow and hurriedly added, “I didn’t—Winn told me what happened.” Kara wasn’t a terrible liar, Cat conceded, but she wasn’t a good one. “With the thing. In Patriot’s head. Which was probably what was causing him to act the way he did. He didn’t deserve to die.”

“Probably not,” Cat acknowledged. “But that wasn’t Supergirl’s failure. Kara”—Kara’s head jerked up a little in surprise that Cat had gotten her name right, which Cat ignored—“you don’t know this, because it was before you started working here, but Patrick Bascom was a sexist, sleazy scumbag long before he became Patriot. Being possessed and getting his hands on a vaporizer gun made him more powerful, but it didn’t change the way he thought about himself or other people. It doesn't mean he deserved to die, but it does mean the parasite wasn't the beginning of the problem. And there are plenty like him. Practically a buffet if you’re a power-hungry brain parasite. Superpowers can’t fix that.”

“Yeah, it seems like there are a lot of problems that can’t be fixed.”

“You weren’t listening. I said super _powers_ can’t fix it. That’s Supergirl’s mistake. People don’t need her to _save_ them." Kara gave her a look. Cat huffed. "Oh, fine, occasionally people fire people who turn out to have supervillain powers and then, yes, we do need Supergirl to save us, but mostly what people need is for her to inspire them. Show them they can be better. Catco would collapse if I tried to manage everything we produce myself; it runs because I inspire the rest of my staff and get out of their way.” Unless they were incompetent. And to be fair, sometimes Cat’s understanding of _inspiration_ was closer to other people’s understanding of _abject terror._ “The point is, people need Supergirl to show up, and keep showing up. Even when, yes, she fails.” Cat paused. “Like you, with my coffee. Supergirl should learn from you.”

“How do you do it?” Kara said, shaking her head. “Keep showing up.”

“Well, I won’t pretend it’s easy. Win one battle, and all you get is far enough to see how much further you have to go. And you figure out that most of the villains don’t announce themselves like Patriot did. They look like your friends, your colleagues, people you thought you could trust, except you start seeing all the little things they do to tear you down. But Kara, you know what I’m addicted to even more than good coffee?” Kara raised her eyebrows incredulously. “Proving wrong everyone who underestimates me.”

Kara snorted a little, and this time when Cat raised an eyebrow at her, she matched it with a raised eyebrow of her own.

“Look at Carter,” Cat went on. “Do you think he’d ever be the kind of man Bascom was?”

“What? No!”

“Exactly. Which is mostly because he was raised by a competent mother and knows that women are people—but it’s also because of Supergirl. You’ve watched him, you know how much he admires her. And when he’s running his own company—or doing whatever it is he decides to do, I would never restrict his choices—he’ll take that with him.”

Kara half-smiled. “Carter’s pretty great,” she agreed, which Cat allowed even though generally she had no patience for stating the obvious. Then Kara sighed. “I just… wish it didn’t have to take so long.”

“Kara, if you can’t find a way to commit to something for the long haul, you’re better off getting out of the business early,” Cat said. That was a dare, one she hoped both Supergirl and Kara Danvers would take.

“This article needs to get down to Content. Chop chop.”

* * *

_**Later** _

That evening, Cat was curled up at home on her couch with a glass of wine when she caught motion over her balcony. For a second, her heart raced with a terrifying sense of déjà vu, and then she remembered that Carter was safe in his room and realized that the movement she had seen was not Patriot but Supergirl.

Cat slipped on a robe and stepped into the cooling night air. Supergirl hovered a few feet away, eyes level with Cat’s. Cat had seen her assistant at night many times before, but always under the harsher light of the office and the stress of a deadline. She realized now that moonlight flattered Kara.

“Wine?” Cat offered. “Are there rules about drinking and flying?”

Kara blushed. “What? No, I—I came to check on Carter.”

“He’s asleep.”

They were silent for a while. Cat knew Supergirl hadn’t only come for Carter. Eventually Kara spoke again.

“The article you wrote about me.”

“It hasn’t been published yet,” Cat pointed out.

“I know. I—one of your employees let me see a copy.”

One of her employees. That was amusing. Cat almost confessed right then that she knew Supergirl’s secret identity, but something held her back. Instead she said, “If it was Jimmy Olsen, tell him I never authorize giving advance copies to my subjects in exchange for interviews. I won’t change anything just because you ask me to.”

“It’s not that,” Supergirl said. “I wanted to thank you, actually.”

“Oh?”

“Some of the things you wrote. They… made me think.”

“Mm.” Cat smiled. “Good.”

“Anyway, I have to go, but tell Carter I’m glad he’s okay.” Carter, Cat knew, would be livid that he’d missed Supergirl. “And thank you.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Cat said. She didn’t often say it, but then, none of her previous assistants had ever gone above and beyond the way Kara Danvers did. “Good night, Supergirl.”

Cat slid the balcony door open and stepped through, half-turning as she pulled it closed and giving a little wave. She knew the posture presented her at a flattering angle. Kara blushed again; Supergirl wasn’t the only one who looked good silvered in moonlight. And if Cat Grant was going to set about seducing a superhero, she was damn well going to do it in style.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I know we all know this, but just so we're on the same page here: this is fiction, I do not condone employers trying to seduce their employees IRL, especially when the employees don't have superpowers to balance out the power dynamic.


End file.
